I hate when people claim it's cowardly to do so. This is absolute nonsense as you have go right against your natural instincts to do so of self preservation. Nor are they even consistent on this issue.
We see constant examples of people taking their own lives that aren't viewed this way. The old jumping on a grenade to save others for example. This actually does happen. In some cases the person who makes that sacrifice actually had a opportunity to possibly save themselves. But they made the conscious choice to take their own life and no one calls them cowards for it. Why? Because it's seen as brave to choose to die many if not most seem incapable of choosing to die under any circumstance. Now, granted that is heroic and most actions of someone taking their own life will greatly fall short of heroism. But no matter the reason on why someone took their own life they have to get over that same exact fear and instinct that the person who landed willing on that grenade did. Therefore it cannot be a act of cowardice and if it were being a coward is easy and suicide should be much more common.
I'll give further evidence on this by using this very forum. Go ahead and look at the discussion of methods here. Now, obviously there are methods that pretty much all of us could do right now. We could easily set ourselves on fire as certainly almost everyone of us has access to creating a fire. But most of us sure the heck aren't brave enough to do that. (I'm not) and would elect to take a much easier way out as do seemingly most of us here. This shows that suicide is if anything linked to bravery and that bravery is more of a scale. But suicide is most certainly on the brave end of the scale.
Then of course there is the idiotic fact that the person who is trying to convince the other person to not take their life is taking their time talking down to and belittling the suicidal person. How dense do these people need to be to think that this approach is somehow going to do anything more than hurting the person who wants to die. It just creates the complete opposite effect.
I guarantee you if we took a group of actively suicidal people and non-suicidal people and trained both groups in bomb defusal. You'd find the suicidal group having more volunteers when it comes to handling live bombs. If no one knew we were suicidal while attempting to defuse it we'd be considered brave and even heroic to be willing to die. Yet somehow we are cowards if they simply knew.
This topic drives me insane because it's a clear attempt to demonize suicidal people. Because they either can't admit that it isn't a cowardly choice or maybe it's a ego thing and they can't admit that they aren't brave enough to make that choice ever for themselves. So they reverse the roles and somehow you, the person who is willing to self terminate for whatever reason is somehow the coward and they are somehow brave.
Of course the group always belittles outsiders, it's hardwired. It's anthropologically healthy group behavior.
No surprise there, though you can see indoctrinative peer group pressure over centuries driving the effect into its opposite, where temporarily, outsider groups are seen as heroes for a long enough period to turn the erstwhile insiders into outsiders... we see such an effect happening now, but nothing changes, just that on overdog group is being turned into underdogs. Human mass psychology is incapable of anything else, and that has evolutionary reasons - true egalitarianism would be lethal to the species. You will probably not be able to folow this argumentation, but it's rather a tangential to this thread anyway.
The dumbest lie ever (and that belongs in another thread) is to assume that humans will ever be able to remain neutral to mass psychosis...
I don't consider it brave when people burn themselves, there is too string an element of irrationality in this... these are usually people who need to prove a point rather than just want to die, they desire to make a statement to society. That's a big difference.
I'm not even sure if I would jump on a grenade (most likely I would jump for cover) - that doesn't necessarily make lots of sense and is NOT a rational decision.
People who are not afraid, or act out of impulses, are not brave in my book - though they may well be subconsciously suicidal.
I've always done what needed be done - though often with great reluctance - I consider exactly that adequately and sanely brave, I'm a rational person within human limits and I'm proud of it because it's the only sensible way to be - I'm sure any healthy animal would agree this if could take part in this conversation ;)
Humans are humans and it's useless to expect unusual reactions from them.
So, don't. Saves you lotsa disappointments.
May even save you from getting suicidal feelings - and that's the only anti-suicidal argument I'm going to use at this point ;)
